Listen to Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/tapdancingonshagcarpeting.mp3

or read his story below:

TAP DANCING ON SHAG CARPETING

“You have heard the sound of two hands clapping, but have you heard the sound of three hands clapping?”

Thoughts like this slither into my mind during the short periods between customers at the bookstore.

“She was aged to imperfection.”

You know, inexplicable thoughts like this—the kinds of thoughts that seem important at the time but ultimately are tossed into the napkin-note sticky-note file for later contemplation.

“You can only observe one-tenth of an iceberg lettuce salad.”

Where did that one come from?

The front door chimes and I am lifted from my navel contemplation. I arise from behind the counter and smile to the customer, “Good morning! How can I help you today?”

A woman of indeterminate age frowns, holds up a shiny book by two fingers, as if it is contaminated and ready for recycling. “I want to return this book for a refund,” she announces.

My policy is ironclad. I always refund, no questions asked. Or at least no questions required. But just for future reference, I say, “OK. Is there anything wrong with the book?”

She sneers, looks into the air—not at me—and says, “I just don’t like the way it ended. I want my money back.”

I am at a loss for words. I look for words, but they seem to have fallen out of my head and rolled under something, out of sight.

“Er, sorry,” I sputter. I determine that this particular customer has made up her mind and is well beyond literary conversation or conversion. I also determine that she will probably never return. I think, too, that she has read very few books in her life and has no idea how a real bookstore operates. I am happy to refund her money in hopes that she will soon disappear and be replaced by appreciative browsers.

She stuffs the refund into her copious purse and grumbles to herself all the way to the door, her experiment with reading over and done with.

I re-shelve the book, return to my storely duties and my lone thoughts.

“She is as pure as the driven sludge.”

Where did that thought come from?

I wonder whether there are other would-be customers like her. Maybe, to paraphrase my Brother, Tim, she is part of a That Customer franchise, people who haunt old bookstores with unlikely demands, then dematerialize.

“I’m looking for a book by GO-eeth,” one customer says. It takes a while to decipher Goethe from his request. I gladly provide him with Goethe.

“I’m looking for poem,” a gruff character states. When I lead him to the poetry section, he stares blankly, arms limp, as if I’ve invited him to tap dance on shag carpeting.

“No, I’m looking for POEM,” he repeats. It takes some time to figure out that he is searching for pornography, or PORN, as it is called these days. Dang, we are fresh out of porn, I say to myself.

I gently let him down and he leaves—again, someone who will never return.

Some folks seem to be searching for Manifest Density. If there is no such thing, there ought to be.

Me, I’m just drifting with my thoughts on a normal day at the least normal bookstore you’ll ever visit, the most enjoyable bookstore you will ever visit, a bookstore stripped bare of unsavory endings and GO-eeth and porn

© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast:  https://youtu.be/9AZCoJYdGUg

or read his transcript below: 

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE RAGING IMAGINATION

Wild imaginings jotted down this very morning in my Deep South Red Clay Diary

Being incarcerated by a pandemic makes my brain rattle about at warp speed.

Every small happening assumes gigantic stature.

Maybe because the small happenings are all we have some days.

Exactly what day is it, anyhow?

For instance…

It’s a quarter to three, there’s no-one in the dental clinic parking lot but just me and me.

I’m waiting for an hour and fifteen minutes to see a dentist who may or may not spend another hour and a half doing things to me in a dental chair, things for which he will be reimbursed.

Not used to lingering, I do just about anything to avoid situations in which I must float helpless at the whim of strangers.

This means that little ol’ spoiled entitled me is whining while there are people lined up worldwide waiting for hours, days, weeks, simply hoping for food or medical care or escape…people who are on hold for 2 1/2 days on the phone attempting to complete a form for funds they will possibly never receive.

I fidget while the world is aflame. I feel guilty for fretting.

At times like this I search for solace by staring intensely at normally unstareable things.

I sit here in my automobile in the clinic parking lot, motor running, AC on, cold cola at hand, clumsily dealing with my fear of doctors, ranting to myself about how good life will be when I can get back to living it.

Is this pandemic or neurosis? Maybe both.

I focus straight ahead at the building before me. Venetian blinds–which are closed, of course–cover large windows originally made to allow view and sunshine to enter, allow those trapped indoors to see what the outside world is up to. But windows are immediately turned into blank walls by shades and blinds and curtains, causing me to wonder why windows exist at all.

My pandemic mind continues its race against slow mo’ time.

I see from this side of the windshield the red bricks on each side of the blinded window, arranged here and there in what somebody thought was a pleasant design.

In front of the brick view is a rather scraggly tree, poorly cropped, with saggy little blossoms and ratty leaves, pleading for attention and care. Most of us, the spaced-apart, are also pleading.

A dental assistant wanders about the parking lot, searching for me, the next victim, er, patient. I snap back to the present as she approaches the car, allow my touchless temperature to be taken, dutifully follow her into the cool and somber clinic. Soon I am dealing with a more immediate reality–the reality of science poking about in my mouth.

Nothing like the immediate gloved touch and metallic meanderings of a stranger to bring me up to the moment. I am distracted from these self-centered concerns by conversation and diagnosis and eventual release back into the rotating world of activity. I pay the smiling desk piper, escape to my car, get the heck out of dental world, and look forward to the routines of the socially-distanced day.

What was I so worried about, anyhow?

The post-dental city awaits my invisible presence. My pandemic brain continues to rant and wander

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

THIS OLD HOUSE

This old house is just sitting here in the dusk by the side of the road that I am driving on, on my way away from Birmingham to Blountsville, just this side of nowhere.

The sun and the mellowed-red skies are behind the house, and the streaked clouds glow, casting the front of the house into shadows. Shadows that are not quite ebony, not quite grey, not yet blackened.

This old house sitting in the dusk looks abandoned but sturdy, a place you could still move into and live a life should you choose. But it looks like nobody has been here for quite some time. The windows have no inner glow to them, as if lights and lanterns have not been turned on for years.

Houses like this old house are always considered haunted by my generation and my parents’ generation. Some are scared to enter houses that are old and not quite stylish. Afraid they will run into things that a well-lighted carpeted air-conditioned suburban home would not possibly contain. Things like ghosts and spirits and nesting animals and crawly critters.

There is something different about this old house, though. It just sits here empty but ready for occupancy. It is not run down and abused like those feared old houses of yore. Nobody has vandalized it or marked it for demolition, desolation.

Nobody wants this old house right this instant.

My first thought in seeing this old house is, I’ll bet there are some really interesting ghosts in that place! But something nudges me, pushes me one notch further. No, this is a house so lonely that it would gladly welcome ghosts.

This is a house so forlorn that even the ghosts have moved out, gone on to other hauntings.

The hair stands up on the back of my neck.

Both life and death have been sucked out of the wooden floors and plaster walls.

This old house now just rests in a time zone all its own, and it is just a matter of time before either curious humans or curious ghosts take a second look and try to decide whether this elegant corpse is ready for rejuvenation, reanimation.

Or whether it is now so much a part of the landscape that it will be abandoned and willed to the winds and the rains and the scorching days and the humid nights, till it looks once more like the red clay earth from which it sprang

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/khtgsRte980

or read the actual transcript below:

THE 47 UMBRELLAS OF ELSEWHERE 

Raindrops plop upon my head as I rush from grammar school to home back here in the 1940s of Deep South Alabama. My book satchel filled with damp homework assignments and half an uneaten apple left over from lunch, I am on course to find safe haven before the storm ramps up.

But childhood distracts. I slow down to let the rain soak my clothes and leaden my shoes.

Taking time to scan the horizon, I see so many wonderful challenges. There are mud puddles everywhere, beckoning. There are gutters spouting off ready-made outdoor showers. There are cars rushing by to splatter me with smiles and gasps.

I begin stomping at least once in every pothole, each soaked-grass median, pausing only now and then to catch my breath beneath sheltering trees.

Adults can be spotted along the way, leaning with their umbrellas, fighting against the brisk air.

I wonder what it would be like to own my own umbrella.

As the 1950s overtake me, I begin to experiment with the idea of not being soaked to the bone after walks in the rain. I even discover a tattered umbrella and wrestle it into partial usage. This time, the raindrops no longer fall upon my head, at least.

Then, I find myself using my Mother’s umbrella as a wind-catcher when I roller skate down our little avenue, even on rainless days.

I am seldom rewarded for arriving home drenched, or showing up with Mother’s turned-inside-out umbrella. But the fun I have seems to belong just to me, since I figure everybody else in town uses umbrellas as walking-sticks or protective weapons, or as just a way to look suave and prepared.

Then, I discover Gene Kelly in the film Singin’ in the Rain. Gene is doing all the things for his audience that I always felt were forbidden to kids like me. I instantly see that he remembers what it is like to be in grammar school, finding jolly good times in the gift nature is bestowing. It is OK to go racing in the rain!

Now, decades later, as a Deep South geezer reminiscing about umbrellas, I begin to count all the umbrellas I’ve owned or borrowed or lent or destroyed during this incredibly long lifespan.

As you and I know, umbrellas have a life of their own. Umbrellas are seldom where you need them when you need them, because they tend to remain in the last place you were. No amount of compensating addresses this problem, even when I purchase a dozen and scatter them about for convenience. They still migrate and mock and remain elusive, inanimate denizens of a merrily disjointed world.

They are crying out to be forgotten. They are screaming, “Toss me aside and accept what is coming down. Find your bliss and cling to it for dear life.”

Oh, the total is 47.

47 umbrellas I’ve owned or known, and they all live in the town of Elsewhere.

And Elsewhere is where I will find them once I’m done with treading the healing waters of Now

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.